The article takes a critical look at the idea that the gathering of men Lucretia confronts a few moments before her suicide is to be understood as an ancient Roman domestic court (consilium domesticum). Arguing from the basis that the paternal power (patria potestas) is a constitutive element of this private-law institution, it examines what supports and what conflicts with the interpretation.

According to speech-act theory, we do things with words every time we speak. The most striking thing one can do with words is to exercise authority over others, such as when a judge issues a guilty verdict in a criminal trial. Some speakers hold this kind of authority without good reason; this kind of speech constitutes an unjust imposition of authority, and thus arguably harms in a direct, non-metaphorical sense; it would seem, therefore, that it should not be protected by freedom of speech. The problem in these cases, however, does not lie in the words that harmful speakers utter, but in the things they have the power to do with them. It is this power, it seems, that must be dismantled: in speech-act terms, we must tackle felicity conditions, not locutions. This paper defends this insight. By providing an account of the (alleged) authority of pornographers as both epistemic and informal, I claim that the presumption against censoring porn is not lifted even if the speech-act argument succeeds in showing that pornography can be constitutive of harm. This does not mean that such harms should not be countered, but they should be countered as the specific kinds of harms that they are.

This article is about J. R. R. Tolkien's adaptation of Pythagorean musical elements in the ‘Song of the Ainur’ of the Silmarillion. It details Tolkien's use of Pythagorean dissonance, along with what that amounts to in terms of musical theory, and explores the epistemological origins of the concept and how it found its way into this work of fiction. On the latter point, Platonism, Neoplatonism, and early Christian theology are considered. This includes the likes of Prudentius, pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine, and Aquinas, among others. The article observes that Tolkien has deliberately chosen a somewhat esoteric element of Pythagorean musical theory, albeit highly relevant to his own historical context, in order to explore concepts of morality along with the traditional, Christian conundrum of predestination vs. free will.

This paper sets out Joseph Ratzinger’s Christocentric theology of creation as a counter to the increasingly popular naturalist movement anti-natalism. Paradoxically, anti-natalism is parasitic on the doctrine of creation and yet, at the same time, denies creation, for, as Ratzinger argues, the doctrine of creation affirms both the human person and the natural world within which she lives; creation is necessary for self-acceptance. Furthermore, creation and redemption go together. It is with and through the human person, not without, that the natural world is brought to its proper end.

Usage-based theory has proposed that learning of linguistic constructions is facilitated by input that contains few high-frequency exemplars, in what is known as a skewed (or Zipfian) input distribution. Early empirical work provided support to this idea, but subsequent L2 research has provided mixed findings. However, previous approaches have not explored the impact that cognitive traits (e.g., working memory) have on the effectiveness of skewed or balanced input. The experiment reported here tested learners’ ability to develop new L2 categories of adjectives that guide lexical selection in Spanish verbs of “becoming.” The results showed that, when explicit rules are provided, low-working memory learners benefitted from reduced variability in skewed input, while high-working memory individuals benefitted from balanced input, which better allows for rule-based hypothesis testing. The findings help clarify the mixed findings in previous studies and suggest a way forward for optimizing the L2 input based on individual traits.

The final episode of the Anabasis dismays many readers: Xenophon takes a small group of associates to kidnap the household of the wealthy Persian, Asidates. Thereby he himself becomes wealthy. This paper examines several details of the account of that episode. The mature author gives us the unvarnished facts straightforwardly, through the uncritical perspective of the youthful agent. From these brute facts the reader may infer that the mature writer intends a negative judgement about the final episode. The mature Xenophon thus presents some self-criticism. That capacity for self-criticism may come from the influence of Socrates. There are reasons, however, to make a further judgement that Xenophon's admirable capacity for self-criticism was sadly limited. One cannot escape deep disappointment after reflecting on the final episode of the Anabasis.

We classify the irreducible unitary representations of closed simple groups of automorphisms of trees acting $2$-transitively on the boundary and whose local action at every vertex contains the alternating group. As an application, we confirm Claudio Nebbia’s CCR conjecture on trees for $(d_0,d_1)$-semi-regular trees such that $d_0,d_1\in \Theta $, where $\Theta $ is an asymptotically dense set of positive integers.

Terminalia chebula Retz. is a multipurpose tree but the primary purpose of cultivating and raising this tree species is its fruits. Large sized fruits easily fetch higher prices in the national and global markets. The availability of superior germplasm is, however, restricted by its very low natural regeneration, poor germination capacity of the seeds, very little knowledge about its propagation techniques, long juvenile period for fruits production which is almost 15–20 years. The availability of superior germplasm and shortening of long juvenile period can be resolved by the adoption of various vegetative propagation techniques. In the present study, scions of T. chebula Retz. were grafted on three different rootstocks; T. chebula Retz., Terminalia bellirica Roxb. and Terminalia arjuna Bedd to standardize vegetative propagation techniques in T. chebula. The grafting and budding methods used were cleft grafting, side-veneer grafting and patch budding. The results revealed that out of all the propagation techniques evaluated under nursery conditions, cleft grafting was most promising. It showed better results on principal parameters like graft survival ratio (46.67) and graft take ratio (60.00). In case of rootstocks, T. arjuna performed well on most of the growth parameters. Hence, it is concluded that T. arjuna as a rootstock can be cleft grafted with T. chebula Retz. scion not only to obtain healthy plants with desired characteristics in a short time but also to conserve its germplasm.